In response to competitive pressures and the demands of continual product improvement philosophies such as Total Quality Management, food product manufacturers in the food processing industry are striving to increase production quality and production rates without significantly increasing costs. Food products which are manufactured in a continuous line often require treatment at various temperatures for prescribed periods of time. To increase a manufacturer's output it is necessary to increase the speed of treatment or to increase the capacity of treatment equipment. Increased treatment speed requires increasingly efficient heat transfer processes, and may effect the taste and texture attributes of the final product. One way to increase capacity is to add additional treating units to an existing line. Installation of new machines, however, may require the relocation of numerous apparatus, and in some cases may require costly expansion of plant facilities. Ideally, increased capacity treatment equipment should take up no greater floor space than the equipment it replaces.
Typically products which are cooked or blanched must be cooled prior to final packaging and storage or transport. Bagged soup in pouches and pie fillings are examples. It is known to first blanch or cook the product in a rotary drum blancher which advances the food product through a heated water tank with a helical auger, and then discharge the food product onto a belt or other type of conveyor and advance the food product to a rotary drum cooler to reduce the treated product to an acceptable lowered temperature.
What is needed is a single compact apparatus which both heats and subsequently cools food product in a continuous flow.